p e n g u i n d e v i l

I admit that most of us find some element of “dysfunction” in our family’s, but sometimes I wonder how many families out there are really off their rockers. Sometimes it seems like there must be more of them than I would expect. Why do I think about this right now? Well, there are all of those “celebrity” documentaries where you find out just how wacky and annoying some families are, ones that make my family seem pleasingly calm and collected… Films such as Grey Gardens and Crumb… Maybe even The Devil According to Daniel Johnston. But I think we’ve just seen the most extreme… You’re Gonna Miss Me. First off, no, I don’t have any particular interest in schizophrenia or craziness in general, so I don’t know why I end up watching these. I think that (except for the Daniel Johnston one) I didn’t really have any idea how the people involved would really be before I sat down to watch them. We ended up getting this because we heard it was good and because I knew absolutely nothing about Roky Erickson except for that there was an old band called 13th Floor Elevators and that I used to see a lot of old concert flyer’s for the band.

This movie is the story of the Elevators rise to fame in San Francisco, Roky’s decline into drug usage, his arrest for marijuana possession, his consequent incarceration for 3 years in a mental hospital for the criminally insane, his musical career after his release and his general physical and mental decline. Yes, Roky is another schizophrenic drug casualty (though I got the sense that he was maybe a bit off kilter prior to his drug usage). The main focus here is his decline, especially the last 20 years under the care of his mother who is a “crazy old bat” (for lack of a better term), one whose crazed religious insanity gives a bad name to christianity (not that it needed anyone else to do that) and whose hoarding and medical paranoia gives a bad name to those of us who hoard and are paranoid of the medical establishment. She is obsessed with assuaging the blame for his condition that she feels that she is saddled with from everyone… People are so misunderstanding about the care she has given Roky. She is treating his schizophrenia with absolutely nothing. She is treating his everything with nothing. He is unmedicated, completely ungroomed with an abscessing mouth, and he lives in an dumpy little apartment in Austin (is there some national plot to make Texas look as unappealing as possible in movies and on TV?). The apartment is a horrible mess of clutter and continually running noisy electronics, where his mother just lets him be and do his thing.

Also in this blend are his four brothers who are hopeful that something can be done to straighten Roky out. Primarily his youngest brother Sumner who now lives in Pittsburgh where he is the tuba player (tubist?) for the Pittsburgh Symphony. Sumner has decided that he can care of his brother better, so a lot of the focus is on getting Roky out of the care of his mother and into the care of Sumner who feels that he can care for him, medicate him and get him some therapy so that he can get himself back together and maybe start performing again (which he hasn’t done in 20 years). The movie is pretty interesting, there are interviews with Gibby and Billy Gibbons and lots of old footage of the Elevators playing, Roky is a charming old sweetheart and though Sumner maybe doesn’t really know what he is getting himself into, his heart is certainly in the right place. Plus he lives in possibly the strangest house I have ever seen.

And though I hate TV as much as the next guy, I must make a little comment about Lost. First off, yes, I admit it’s a crappy show: bad actors, lame characters, dumb scripts and such a convoluted and ridiculous storyline that it’s obvious that the writers go out of their way to throw as much ludicrous crap out as they can every week. I tried to avoid it as much as possible, but eventually, I couldn’t help but check it out. Anyway, that said, I now watch it. Why? Well into that mix of bad actors, dumb annoying characters and bad writing and storyline, they threw Michael Emerson and his character of Benjamin Linus. Suddenly, this show had one of my favorite characters on TV going for it. Not only is Emerson a reasonably good actor, but to have a character appear who is both intelligent, interesting, charismatic and doesn’t have his head up his $%# like the rest of them was so relieving that the rest of it became somewhat bearable… If only to see what Ben would pull next with this gaggle of fools. And to top it off, he is a relentless bad$%# (as was perfectly well shown in this last episode’s desert scene with the two unlucky horsemen). Most of the other characters are so bad that it’s hard to sit through them: Sawyer (probably the worst character of them all), Kate, Jack… The list goes on. The only thing I don’t like about the Ben Linus character is that he has made me a watcher of this lame show. Okay, all else isn’t lost with the show… Locke and Hurley are both good characters and well-played, but one is a little too putzy and the other is a little too irritating to bring me into the show.